


Swansong

by rivers_bend



Series: Graffiti series [3]
Category: Supernatural
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-02-28
Updated: 2010-02-28
Packaged: 2017-10-07 15:20:06
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 910
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/66415
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rivers_bend/pseuds/rivers_bend
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A Sharpie is much better than a ballpoint for writing on wood.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Swansong

The first Sharpie is from a Gas 'n' Sip in Arkansas—the loot from an accidental shoplifting when Dean is thirteen. The guy behind the counter is having trouble with the register when Dean goes in to pay, and Dean picks the pen up to fidget with while he's waiting, absentmindedly shoving it in his pocket when he takes the change. It's black, with a fine point slightly frayed from having been pressed too hard against something. Probably by the idiot who couldn't even get the cash register to work.

Dean doesn't use it to add to the _Here I sit, broken hearted…_ and _Colin likes it up the ass_ sentiments in the station's dirty bathroom, though he does cross out the _Dean loves Amanda_ with a heart around it. He doesn't even know an Amanda, and other people shouldn't write his name on bathroom walls, who cares if it's their name too.

Even with a frayed tip, the Sharpie is much better than a ballpoint for writing on wood. Dean leaves his initials under the TV unit in room 43 of the Pioneer Inn outside of Arkadelphia the next morning before they get back on the road.

The next one, he steals on purpose from a Wallgreens in Illinois. Blue, it's one of the stubby, pocket-sized ones. He scoops up two, tests one on the paper label that's covered in lines where others have done the same, and then only drops one back in the tub, sliding the other one up his sleeve, and then down into his pocket in the next aisle. Dad would lecture him about only taking things they _need_ and can't get any other way, if he knew, but he doesn't find out. Their room that night only has solid furniture, but the bathroom counter is just a top on struts, and Dean leaves his mark next to the hot water pipe.

Dean loses the blue Sharpie after a couple of months and has to go back to ballpoint until the school year starts and his new teacher has a whole bouquet of pens in an ugly ceramic pot on her desk. She has five or six Sharpies, and Dean's sure she won't miss one.

When Dean's sixteen, Sammy finds out about his tradition, but Dean refuses to talk about it, and Sam doesn't bring it up again. For a month Dean doesn't leave his initials in any of the rooms they stay in, but then in a flea-pit outside Salt Lake City, he forgets that he's stopped doing that, and leaves his initials and the date under the seat of a chair with a cracked spindle on the back.

He's not particular about where he does it, except that it has to be someplace no one is likely to look. Dean's left his initials on the backs of cheesy pastoral prints, under all kinds of tables and chairs, and once on the inside of a bed's leg. Places they go more often—Bobby's house, or Pastor Jim's—Dean has one piece of furniture he uses, but otherwise, he likes to mix it up.

The first time was a house they stayed in for a month-and-a-half in North Carolina. Someone had written a poem on the underside of the kitchen table, and when Dad was out and Sammy was asleep, Dean would like on his back with a flashlight and read it to himself. It was about trees and love and horses, and Dean didn't really understand it, but he liked that he was the only one who knew it was there. Before they left, he'd taken one of Dad's fat pencils and put his initials on the underside of every piece of furniture in the house that he could.

Dean doesn't put his initials on school desks, because pretty much everyone else does. He feels no need to write his name in bathrooms, or truck stops, or diners. But leaving his name where he sleeps is a habit he can't seem to break.

They're in Fort Wayne, Indiana when Sam announces that he's going to college. He and Dad have been finding it harder and harder to get along the last couple years, and Dean's always left stuck in the middle. He hates it, but he hates Sam leaving even worse.

After he puts Sam on a bus—bastard refused Dean's offer of a ride to California—Dean goes to the nearest bar and gets drunk. Then drunker. By the time the bartender cuts him off, his bladder is screaming and he can hardly stand.

He ends up locked in the men's room scribbling song lyrics and composed-on-the-spot screeds about betrayal all over the walls. It's not until the pounding on the door becomes threats to call 911 that Dean stops and looks at what he's doing.

"Fuck it," he says, and throws the Sharpie in the toilet. The window overlooks the parking lot, and after a few attempts he gets it open and drops into the gravel below. He spends three nights in his car before he finally goes back to the motel where he'd left his dad.

The urge isn't gone completely, and sometimes Dean finds himself fingering the underside of whatever table he's sitting at, but he doesn't replace his pen, and Fort Wayne is the last place Dean leaves graffiti. He moves on to leaving his name and number scribbled on napkins that get tucked into purses and pockets instead.


End file.
